Brian Costello & Ryan Kenealy: Pittsburgh

Brian Costello and Ryan Kenealy continue their tour to the east coast, stopping in Pittsburgh for a reading at The Big Idea Bookstore.

Losing in Gainesville by Brian Costello:

Set in mid-1990s Florida, Losing in Gainesville hilariously explores what failure means in a culture where everyone is supposed to win. Razorcake praised Brian Costello's first novel for its language and attention to detail and Bookslut lauded its dialogue and conversational narrator. These strengths are once again on display in Losing in Gainesville. With an ensemble cast of slackers, burn-outs, musicians, and dreamers, who are all losing something—their youth, their ambitions, their careers, their children, their former identities—Costello builds a sun-bleached world of people struggling to understand what it means to succeed on their terms.

Animals in Peril by Ryan Kenealy:

A long-awaited debut collection of stories from an author who’s mystified by what moves the human heart, Animals in Peril explores our relationships with animals, other people, and ourselves.

Representing the furry, the feathered, the four-legged and the winged, the cast of Animals in Peril includes a coronary thrombotic shih tzu from Chicago, a junko that flies into a skyscraper, a decapitated skunk in Ohio, and a runaway roan, depicted in black-and-white watercolor images by the author. At times humorous, melancholic, and self-reflective, these Midwestern stories examine the love we extend to our pets, how we project human complexities upon animal behavior, and how little we actually know about the 1.5 million species of animals with whom we share this planet.